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> Samsung, like every manufacturer, should set their old phones free. Open up their bootloaders. Let people use their [...] They aren't Samsung's phones. They'

> Samsung, like every manufacturer, should set their old phones free. Open up their bootloaders. Let people use their [...] They aren't Samsung's phones. They're yours and mine and whoever traded money to own a device and now OWNS THAT DEVICE. We shouldn't be okay with this new world where we're begging companies to LET us use our OWN devices for whatever the hell we want.

cl0ckt0wer 5y ago
I wish we owned the software when we bought the hardware.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  I wish it wasn't even possible to own software in the first place.
belltaco 5y ago
Hah, after the first sentence I was thinking you were going to say they're the carriers' phones. Which is kind of true in the sense that many carriers, especially in the US, enforce a lot of things in phones including locked bootloaders, disabling the second SIM or eSIM, removing FM radio support etc. Verizon is notorious to be the worst in this regard. OnePlus disabled the eSIM in their latest phone which let to outrage and returns among some of the enthusiast community.
- spijdar 5y ago
  The situation is complicated. I want all our software to be free and hardware easily modifiable, but I'm also aware of why radios are regulated the way they are. This is sort of a separate issue from the locked bootloaders on the phone itself, but the radio/modem on phones is very controlled and locked down, and ... probably for the better? Bad actors can already get their hands on the technology to spoof/intercept cellular traffic so that cat is kind of out of the bag, but if the modems were totally open and could effectively be turned into SDRs, I worry a bit about the ramifications. I've talked to script kiddie teens who get their giggles out of downloading some dodgy windows or android app to mass deauth wifi clients from APs. If it truly becomes easy to gain full access of your average phone's modem, I wonder what sorts of similar apps would appear. Maybe it'd be no worse than wifi, but given the much greater scope and potential damage from a DoS'd/jammed cell tower, it's a heavy topic IMO...
SkittyDog 5y ago
> They aren't Samsung's phones. They're yours and mine... In English, the grammatical "possessive" is not only used to mean legal ownership... It can refer to nearly any kind of proprietary relationships: • "Their husbands all laughed at the joke." • "Their jobs disappeared when the factory closed." • "Their comments are disagreeable and combatative." The previous poster's use of the possessive was entirely appropriate. I believe your correction was unnecessarily combative and shrill.
- ketralnis 5y ago
  > In English [...] I'm a native speaker, I'm not responding to the grammar. I'm responding to the very notion that Samsung "allow" users to do what they want with their own devices. Quotes like all of these... > by allowing users to unlock the bootloaders of devices Samsung decided to no longer support > Samsung was going to let users replace the shipping Android OS with whatever they wanted > Samsung [...] should set their old phones free > Let people use their cameras, sensors, antennas, and screens for all kinds of purposes, using whatever software people can dream up ...start out with the premise that Samsung should have any say at all what people do the things that they own. That's what the article is about. iFixit wanted to participate in a partnership with Samsung where Samsung would deign to permit users to repurpose their own devices that are no longer profitable to Samsung, and then Samsung changed their minds and you're still not actually allowed to do that and iFixit is annoyed that Samsung tricked iFixit into doing a bunch of marketing for Samsung on the back of a project that doesn't really exist. That's the world that we're in right now, you really do have to beg Samsung to allow you to repurpose your own hardware. But it's not okay, that's not the world we should live in.
  - SkittyDog 5y ago
    Whoosh!

cl0ckt0wer 5y ago

I wish we owned the software when we bought the hardware.

matheusmoreira 5y ago
I wish it wasn't even possible to own software in the first place.

belltaco 5y ago

Hah, after the first sentence I was thinking you were going to say they're the carriers' phones. Which is kind of true in the sense that many carriers, especially in the US, enforce a lot of things in phones including locked bootloaders, disabling the second SIM or eSIM, removing FM radio support etc. Verizon is notorious to be the worst in this regard. OnePlus disabled the eSIM in their latest phone which let to outrage and returns among some of the enthusiast community.

spijdar 5y ago
The situation is complicated. I want all our software to be free and hardware easily modifiable, but I'm also aware of why radios are regulated the way they are. This is sort of a separate issue from the locked bootloaders on the phone itself, but the radio/modem on phones is very controlled and locked down, and ... probably for the better? Bad actors can already get their hands on the technology to spoof/intercept cellular traffic so that cat is kind of out of the bag, but if the modems were totally open and could effectively be turned into SDRs, I worry a bit about the ramifications. I've talked to script kiddie teens who get their giggles out of downloading some dodgy windows or android app to mass deauth wifi clients from APs. If it truly becomes easy to gain full access of your average phone's modem, I wonder what sorts of similar apps would appear. Maybe it'd be no worse than wifi, but given the much greater scope and potential damage from a DoS'd/jammed cell tower, it's a heavy topic IMO...

SkittyDog 5y ago

> They aren't Samsung's phones. They're yours and mine... In English, the grammatical "possessive" is not only used to mean legal ownership... It can refer to nearly any kind of proprietary relationships: • "Their husbands all laughed at the joke." • "Their jobs disappeared when the factory closed." • "Their comments are disagreeable and combatative." The previous poster's use of the possessive was entirely appropriate. I believe your correction was unnecessarily combative and shrill.

ketralnis 5y ago
> In English [...] I'm a native speaker, I'm not responding to the grammar. I'm responding to the very notion that Samsung "allow" users to do what they want with their own devices. Quotes like all of these... > by allowing users to unlock the bootloaders of devices Samsung decided to no longer support > Samsung was going to let users replace the shipping Android OS with whatever they wanted > Samsung [...] should set their old phones free > Let people use their cameras, sensors, antennas, and screens for all kinds of purposes, using whatever software people can dream up ...start out with the premise that Samsung should have any say at all what people do the things that they own. That's what the article is about. iFixit wanted to participate in a partnership with Samsung where Samsung would deign to permit users to repurpose their own devices that are no longer profitable to Samsung, and then Samsung changed their minds and you're still not actually allowed to do that and iFixit is annoyed that Samsung tricked iFixit into doing a bunch of marketing for Samsung on the back of a project that doesn't really exist. That's the world that we're in right now, you really do have to beg Samsung to allow you to repurpose your own hardware. But it's not okay, that's not the world we should live in.
- SkittyDog 5y ago
  Whoosh!